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Sunday, January 6, 2013

Where to Eat: Seafood in a Bag @ The Boiling Crab

The Location: Four in the Greater L.A. region: Koreatown, Rowland Heights and two locations in Alhambra; this post is about the Alhambra Main location

The Vibes: Very, very casual

Good for: An unrivaled way to eat your seafood

With-Whom-To-Go: Groups of friends, dates, the kiddies, out-of-towners; anyone who wants to experience food in a completely different way

The $ Factor: $$; While it’s about $10 per entrée, the real goods – the seafood – are marketprice by the pound, so it all depends how much you orderThe 4-1-1: I would highly advise opting for the bib and not wearing clothes that you care about; it can get messy

I’ll Be Back…: For those incredible King Crab Legs (pictured above)
Typically, I don’t drive an hour to go to a restaurant, nor do I wait an hour to be seated. And I tend to eat my food with plates and forks and knives, and not with a big, plastic bib draped around my neck.

But I will make the exception to my rules for The Boiling Crab, a lively eatery way, way out in Alhambra that’s always packed to the brim with customers and delicious seafood with a Southern, Cajun flair.

The Boiling Crab gets major props for two major reasons:

for the presentation of its food and for the food itself.

Upon arriving, waiters hand out bibs and roll out gigantic pieces of butcher paper to cover your table. The orders of crab, shrimp, crawfish and other seafood items come by the pound in bags, soaked in spices of your choice: Rajun Cajun, Lemon Pepper, Garlic Butter or The Whole Sha-Bang, which is a mixture of the other three flavors.

Dump the bag on the table and dig right in – with your fingers. Peel that shrimp, crack that crab, suck that crawfish. Fingers become stained with seasonings, hundreds of napkins are used and remnants get smeared on cheeks and chins. And, it’s worth it.

The real kicker here though, is the food itself. Everything is seasoned so well, from the seafood to the fried platters, like the catfish and Cajun fries in the Fried Catfish Basket (pictured below). Ordering a bag of the King Crab Legs is a must (those bad boys are big!) along with the Cajun fries. Also order a cup of gumbo. It’s some of the best gumbo I’ve had outside of New Orleans. And best of all, everything comes in large portions and is easily shareable.

So the next time you’re in the mood to toss out the forks and pick up the bib, I highly recommend trekking out to The Boiling Crab. Order the seafood and let me know what you think.